48 PAPAVERACEiE. 



Upper Egypt near Esneh, Kenneh, and Siout, as much as 10,000 

 feddan (equal to about the same number of English acres) of land 

 cultivated with the poppy from which opium was obtained in March, 

 and seed in April. Hartmann ^ states that the cultivation is carried 

 on by the government, and solely for the requirement of the sanitary 

 establishments, 



S. Stafford Allen in 1861 witnessed the collection of opium at 

 Kenneh in Upper Egypt," from a white-flowered poppy. An incision 

 is made in the capsule by running a knife twice round it transversely, 

 and the juice scraped off the following day with a sort of scoop-knife. 

 The gatherings are collected on a leaf and placed in the sun to harden. 

 The produce appeared extremely small and was said to be wholly used 

 in the country 



Gastinel, director of the Experimental Garden at Cairo, and govern- 

 ment inspector of pharmaceutical stores, has shown (1865) that the 

 poppy in Egypt might yield a very good product containing 10 to 12 

 per cent, of morphine, and that the present bad quality of Egyptian 

 opium is due to an over-moist soil, and a too early scarification of 

 the capsule, whereby (not to mention wilful adulteration) the propor- 

 tion of morphine is reduced to 3 or 4 per cent. 



In 1872, 9636 lb. of opium, value £5023, w^ere imported into the 

 United Kingdom from Egypt. 



3. Persian Oj^ium. — Persia, probably the original home of the 

 baneful practice of opium-eating, cultivates the drug chiefly in the 

 central provinces where, according to Boissier, the plant grown to 

 furnish it is Papaver somniferum, var. y albuvi (P. officinale Gm.) 

 having ovate roundish capsules. Poppy heads from Persia which we 

 saw at the Paris Exhibition in 1867, had vertical incisions and contained 

 white seeds. 



The strongest opium called in Persia Teriak-e-Ar(ibisfani is obtained 

 in the neighbourhood of Dizful and Shuster, east of the Lower Tis^ris. 

 Good opium is likewise produced about Sari and Balfarush in the 

 province of Mazanderan, and in the southern province of Kerman. The 

 lowest quality which is mixed with starch and other matters, is sold 

 in light brown sticks; it is made at Shahabdulazim, Kashan, and 

 Kum.^ A large quantity of opium appears to be produced in Khokan 

 and Turkestan. 



Persian opium is carried overland to China through Bokhara, 

 Khokan and Kashgar;* but since 1864 it has also been extensively 

 conveyed thither by sea, and it is now quoted in trade reports like that 

 of Malwa, Patna, and Benares.* It is exported by way of Trebizond to 

 Constantinople where it used to be worked up to imitate the opium 



^ Naturgeschichtl. medicin. Skizze der Nil- 3 Polak, Persien, ii. (1865) 248, &c. 



lander, Berlin, 1866. 353. * Powell, Economic Products of the Pun- 



■ Pharm. Journ. iv. (1863) 199. jah, i. (1868) 294. 



5 Thus in the Trade Report for Foochow, for 1870, addressed to Mr. Hart, Inspector- 

 General of Customs, Pekin, is the following table : 



Malwa. 

 Imports of Opium in 1867 . . chests 2327 



1868 . . ,, 2460 



1869 . . ,, 2201 



1870 . . „ 1849 



